Group Accuses Security Agents Of Killing Over 32, 000 Unarmed Persons In South East

A human rights group, the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), has accused personnel of the Nigerian security forces and killer vigilante organisations of secretly killing about 32,300 unarmed Civilians in Southeastern Nigeria in the past nine years and four months (August 2015- December 2024).

The group alleged that perpetrators of the heinous crime used the proscribed Indigenous people of Biafra IPOB/Eastern Security Network ESN/ Biafra Terrorism as a pretext.

Inter-society had, in the recent past, during similar media outings, accused the Nigerian security operatives of sending innocent citizens of the Southeast zone of the country to their untimely graves.

The allegations were made in two special international reports on rights abuses and violations in the east prepared by Intersociety and released during a world press conference presided over by the organisation’s board chairman, Emeka Umeagbalasi, and other top officials of the organisation in Enugu.

The well-researched document, which has 26 chapters and 272 pages, was authored by senior staffers of the organisation, including its board chairman, a Criminologist, Chief Umeagbalasi, Barrister Chidinma Udegbunam, deputy leader/head of the Campaign and Publicity Department, Barrister Chinwe Umeche, and head of the Democracy and Good Governance Program, Barr. Obianuju Joy Igboeli, head, Liberties and Rule of Law and Barrister Ndidiamaka Bernard.

The report titled, “Nigeria: Ocean of Innocent Blood Flowing in the East” insisted that the massacre of citizens in the region has become worrisome and called for urgent intervention by the international community and other relevant rights bodies.”

The two special international reports read out to newsmen by Barrister Udegbunam are built on documented reports dating back to 2015 or before then, while compilation and computation started since middle of May 2024 (past seven months) using in-depth research and investigation skills and techniques.

“Ocean Of Innocent Blood Flowing In The East” is fundamentally targeted at exposing external and internal forces found to have been responsible for the present war-zone situation of the South-East and the South-South regions of Eastern Nigeria.

“The ‘warzone’ state of public and citizens’ security and safety and their properties include grisly and egregious human rights violations and abuses.

“Mass and targeted killings and property burnings outside the law, body lacerations, abductions, disappearances, torture and other inhuman or degrading treatments or punishments and security sector duty-post corruption particularly military, police and paramilitary roadblock and barracks extortions and other atrocities by armed non-state actors.

“Many non-state actors involved are found to have been procured and clandestinely sponsored by external state actors and their conspiratorial internal state actors both armed and unarmed including some past and present public office holders within and outside Eastern Nigeria particularly in the South-East.

“Intellectually and forensically identified in the Mother Report (“Ocean Of Innocent Blood Flowing In The East”) are two sets of ‘egregious crimes against defenseless persons, their properties and the society’. namely: ‘state actor crimes or state-actor generated insecurity and other unsafe conditions’ and ‘non-state actor crimes or non-state actor generated insecurity and other unsafe conditions’.

“The above highlighted heinous crimes are severely punishable and effectively controllable under Nigeria’s criminal, human rights and humanitarian laws or provisions and their safeguards including the Treaty Laws and Nigeria’s Regional and International Obligations.

“It was the research and investigative finding by ‘Ocean Of Innocent Blood Flowing In The East’ that the Nigerian Government and the country’s heads of security forces establishments hardly pay attention to the perpetration and perpetuation of the ‘state actor crimes’ and their perpetrators, aiders and abettors,” the group maintained.